Polycom Moves to Deepen Integration with Microsoft Lync
Polycom is showing its love for Microsoft Lync by expanding interoperability between its communications products and the UC platform, including the release of a new videoconference room solution designed specifically for Lync.
“The attach rate in the industry for Lync been unprecedented — Microsoft has had tremendous success converting Sharepoint and Exchange customers,” said John Antanaitis, vice president of Product Marketing at Polycom. “They’ve made great strides and we’re very excited about this.”
Currently, he noted, Polycom has 44 solutions that connect to or help extend interoperability with Microsoft Lync. It’s adding to that number with the CX7000, a room-based videoconferencing unit announced in July 2011 that was designed specifically for groups to collaborate in a Lync environment, Antanaitis said.
“When Lync users walk into a conference room, traditionally there’s been a disconnect. But the CX7000 HD voice and video solution runs on Lync platform to take advantage of collaboration Lync offers such as document sharing.”
The CX7000 was not designed to be a H.323 or SIP-based solution, he said; rather, it runs on the Lync platform and, to the software, looks just like any other client on the network. That means the IT department or solution provider doesn’t have to do any integration work to get the two technologies to communicate. “That’s a great benefit for the user community,” he said.
Polycom also announced interoperability with other of its technologies, including:
- Standards-based wireless telephones, including its KIRK Wireless DECT and SpectraLink Wi-Fi models;
- Standards-based desktop and conference phones, which includes certain SoundPoint IP desktop, SoundStation IP conference and VVX business media phones;
- RealPresence Experience and Open Telepresence Experience: Polycom is finalizing testing to enable direct-Lync connection to these suites; and
- RealPresence Platform for universal video collaboration
“What we are showing here is incremental value to customers’ existing investment,” Antanaitis said.
It also shows Polycom is practicing what it preaches when it comes to interoperability, as also witnessed by its launch this year of the Open Visual Communications Consortium. Indeed, most all the moves Polycom has made this year scream either interoperability or “video everywhere” — its ethos of the last few years.
For channel partners of Polycom — and Microsoft, for that matter — these latest moves are a good thing. Technology that has been proven interoperable — especially complimentary technologies such as Polycom’s and Microsoft’s — not only makes the job easier for the channel partner, it also goes a long way toward assuring customers it’s the right technology to adopt.
